Little Angels
by Haleine Delail
Summary: Martha Jones keeps blacking out and waking up somewhere else, only to find that the Doctor had no idea she was gone. What's causing this disturbance? A new rift, electromagnetism, aliens, or something about Martha herself?
1. Chapter 1

**Okay, here we go again. This is an idea that's been incubating for a long time, but it's not going to be epic, I don't think. So, l****et's pick up where Not Better, Just Different leaves off. It's a separate story because it no longer has anything whatsoever to do with Season 4, and the Doctor / Martha relationship is established in NBJD as quite a singular goal. In this story, it's just there as a comfy backdrop. **

**I apologize for all the different series and continuations, etc. when the goal is usually the same (Martha and the Doctor as a couple, having adventures), but I didn't feel this story would work with the Shades of Blue / Elementary series because... well, eventually you may realize why. I'm finding, though, that creating different end-points at different points in the continuum for our favorite couple is opening doors for me, giving me places to pick up that are flexible and different as far as criteria... but this is just me thinking aloud. Sorry.**

**Oh, and if you're thinking that I'm obsessed with France... well, you'd be right. And it shows you're paying attention, congratulations! I wear my francophile mantle with pride!**

**So, as always, enjoy!**

* * *

CHAPTER I

Martha Jones lay in the semi-dark of a room illuminated only by a streetlamp outside the window. She admired the wainscotting and the scalloped wallpaper on the ceiling. There was soft breathing beside her, and it was comforting to her. This was one of the best bits of being in love – the little things, moments longed-for, savoured, but eventually forgotten and replaced. Taking comfort in hearing each other breathe, the warm flush of holding hands, liking the way the other person chews or walks or ties their shoes, taking pleasure in preparing their tea just the way they like it…

And she glanced to her left and smiled lazily at the hypnotic, gentle rise and fall of a chest regulated by slumber. That this particular chest happened to house two hearts did not take away from the warm glow she felt – in fact, oddly enough, it enhanced it.

She closed her eyes and sighed, but in spite of the evening's exertions, she was too wired to sleep – she couldn't remember when last she'd had so much sugar in one day. A croissant with Nutella for breakfast (and when the croissant ran out, she'd eaten Nutella off a spoon), along with some fresh café au lait with two sugars. At Versailles, she'd procured a lemon icy thing, and for lunch a Croque Monsieur with raspberry jam and a Coke. A crêpe with sugar and cinnamon as an afternoon snack (because in Paris, it's like a requirement), and for dinner, nothing but carbs and slightly too much alcohol. The crème brûlée came later, after they'd returned to their room, and now she thought about it, she wondered how she hadn't either gone into a diabetic coma or exploded.

But what the hell, it was a holiday, and oh how they'd earned it, after the year they'd had! Their one other attempt at a break, a jaunt to Hervang, had been intense but short, and they'd been thrown headlong into a universe-shattering debacle with the Daleks, not to mention the not-quite-benign threat of the past batting its brown eyes and wedging its blonde head into their present…

But she would not dwell on that, and she refused to flog herself over her eating habits. Holidays were all about indulgence and relaxation, and they had done plenty of both. Usually, their indulgences led to relaxation, but not tonight, not for her.

She stood and picked up the first piece of clothing she could find. It turned out to be a man's dress shirt, in beige. She disentangled the brown and blue tie from the collar, which hadn't been quite properly removed when the garment had been discarded, took in its scent and then put it on, buttoning only three of the middle buttons. She went to the window and opened both sides of the floor-to-ceiling Parisian _fenêtre_, andwondered just how long it had been since she'd had a proper holiday. Her last year at university, maybe. She gazed out upon the lights of Paris, and smiled.

It had been a whole week, and there had been no aliens (except for the one currently slumbering in this room), no threats, no schemes discovered, no possible changing of human history, not even a tense thriller on the television. It was miraculous! They'd seen everything they wanted to see, did everything they wanted to do, and if today was any indicator, they'd eaten everything they wanted to eat. In fact, they'd got so far removed from their "normal" life, that halfway through the second day in Paris, the local language actually started sounding like French! It meant she'd broken off from her ties to the TARDIS' consciousness, and therefore, its translation circuitry. It worried her at first, but she'd been promptly assured that it was a good thing – it meant she was relaxing and removing herself.

"What's that noise?" a voice groaned from the bed.

She smiled. "It's the sound of contentment," she sighed. "Just go back to sleep."

"Not your best line," he groaned back. "But I'll take it."

He sat up and swung his legs over the side, cradling his head in his hands. When she didn't hear him speak or breathe for a few moments, she turned and saw his seemingly pained stance.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

"Seriously, what's that noise?" he asked.

"Is it something in the street?" she wondered. "Maybe you're hearing a Vespa half a mile away with your fabulous heightened Time Lord hearing."

He scrunched his face and turned to face her. "My what?"

"Well, you can grow new body parts when they get lopped off, and you've got twice as many cardio-vascular systems as I do. Can't you hear better as well?"

"No," he said. "I think you might be confusing me with Superman. Gallifrey, not Krypton, remember?"

"Ah," she nodded. "I _must_ stop doing that."

"Blimey," he groaned, standing. Much as Martha had done a few minutes before, he seemed to grab the nearest piece of clothing, a pair of brown pin-striped trousers, and put it on. He began to pace and muss his own hair rather absently. After a moment he stopped and looked at her. "You don't hear it?"

"No, sorry," she said.

"Hm," he grunted. "Must be all in my head."

She stepped toward the bed and knelt upon it. "Well, if you're just imagining it, then come back to bed. I only got up because I was bored…"

"No, I don't mean I'm imagining it," he said. "I mean it's all in my head."

"Like a telepathic signal or something?"

"I think it's from the TARDIS," he said. "Your link got severed – mine never does."

"Lovely. Does this mean the honeymoon's over?"

"Nah," he said, batting away the question. "Just the holiday."


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER II

Martha exchanged the Doctor's beige dress shirt for a dark green corduroy blazer with a black tank top, frayed denim capris and her favourite brown leather sandals. She pushed her hair away from her face with a wire headband and threw on a bit of makeup, then packed up her things, getting ready to leave Paris.

The sun wasn't up yet when they checked out of the hotel, and Martha hadn't slept a wink. The Doctor had had perhaps ninety minutes' rest before waking up to phantom noises in his brain. This was going to be an exhausting adventure – each of them secretly hoped it would be a short one, at least.

Martha could feel the connection re-established as soon as she entered the TARDIS, parked in an alleyway just off Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle. She smiled big, and said, "Aw, I've missed you."

The Doctor made a beeline for the console and began to stroke the time rotor, staring up into the column of light, as if to ask what's wrong. Martha did not interfere, but simply waited until the Doctor was ready to speak.

Before saying anything, however, he went to the computer screen and began punching numbers and symbols, checking readings and adjusting things. Finally he furrowed his brow as if to express confusion, and as he slumped back into the seat, he said, "Weird."

"What?"

"The TARDIS is detecting a disturbance in time," he explained, not frantically or with any upset in his voice. "It's telling me that there's a high concentration of time… disappearing."

"Okay," she said, walking slowly toward the console. "Time disappearing. I can't even begin to wrap my mind around that one."

He took a deep breath, and exhaled through billowing lips. "Hard to explain. We Time Lords, we can see the whole of the time continuum, across spaces, sometimes across dimensions, we can see what's happened and what will happen, cause to effect, even the wibbly wobbly bits, yeah?"

"Yeah, okay."

"The reason we can do that is... time is tangible. Like matter."

Martha's eyebrows shot up nearly into her hairline. "Time is _matter?_ Wicked!"

"Not matter, exactly," he corrected. "_Like_ matter. It can be moved and displaced in infinitely small or large blocks, toyed with, put in a box and locked up…"

"Or destroyed?"

"Yep. And that's the sort of thing that my people used to regulate. I mean, it's not like we could just pick up last Wednesday with our hands and lay it down on the kitchen table, iron it out and return it to a different week, but we did have instruments that could do almost anything with a block of time," he explained, patting the TARDIS console, smiling a bit. "Mostly, we prefer to _travel_ in time, rather than move things about from the outside. Leave the bricks where they are, and just change some composition of the mortar so the pieces fit together a bit better."

"That makes sense," Martha agreed. "Actually sounds safer. But why did you hear noises in your head?"

"It was the TARDIS in pain. Its heart is made up of time matter (or not-matter, as you like), the swirly, stretchy bits that allows us the flexibility to travel. All time is connected, Martha, so what do you think happens to the TARDIS when pieces of time disappear or are destroyed?"

"It's heartbroken," she said.

"In a manner of speaking," he answered. "Only in a much more literal sense than the human conception of heartbreak. It's more like heartworm in dogs. Something eats away at it."

"Has this ever happened before?"

He shrugged. "Off and on. There are a dozen or so phenomena that could cause it, and it happens in little patches all over the universe. But the TARDIS never made that kind of continuous cry, like it did a little while ago. It's never seen fit to let me know."

"It's not still crying?"

"No," he said. "You'd be able to hear it now, if it were. It's quiet now because it knows we're on the case."

"That we are," she agreed. "So where do we go?"

"Across town."

* * *

"So, you said there are different phenomena that could be causing this," Martha said as they each found a seat on the Métro. "Like what?"

"Well, it could be that someone's opened a dimensional portal, and we're connected to a place where time moves faster," he offered. "Could be a rift opening, like the one in Cardiff. Could be someone travelling in time without a capsule – that's rough on _all _parties involved. A rip in reality sucking things into the void. A time-hopper changing the past or someone making bad decisions which shorten the future – or both. A localised paradox of crossing timelines…"

"Okay, okay," she said. "You're starting to do that thing where you talk so fast you're omitting syllables."

"Sorry."

"Any idea which one it is?"

"Well, I did once have a bit of trouble in Paris with an alien bloke who travelled back four billion years to stop an explosion and almost destroyed humanity," he said. "My goodness, that was a long time ago! I'd forgotten about that – I met Leonardo Davinci!"

"So what's that got to do with today?"

"I don't know. Maybe nothing. Just saying."

* * *

When they resurfaced in the district known as _La Défense_, it was like they'd been magically transported to a different city. They were used to this feeling, of course, but usually it didn't happen while using an underground railway system. This area was modern and had a 'downtown' feel about it, as opposed to the 19th century buildings populating the rest of the city. La Défense had high-rises, proper skycrapers, in contrast to the six-floor limit throughout most of Paris.

They stopped walking suddenly, and the Doctor pointed. "That's where we need to be," he said, taking Martha's hand and indicating a building in front of them. It was a crescent-shaped building, and Martha counted eighteen floors.

"You can feel something there?" she said.

"No, the TARDIS produced GPS coordinates for me," he said. "It's very handy."

Martha shook her head, then she asked, "So what's in there?"

"It's a residential building," he answered. "Ultra-modern flats with a lot of chrome and marble, I'd expect. For the chic businessman who works hard and plays hard and dies hard."

"Cheerful."

"Mm. Now listen, there's probably going to be security in a place like this, so take this," he said, reaching into his pocket. He handed her the psychic paper. "Just follow my lead."

As they began to cross a pristine city square, a sound caught their attention. It sounded like a voice, breaking, echoing from far away. And it could very well have been calling the Doctor's name, but it was so distant, it was difficult to tell. It was close enough to the word _Doctor_ to get their attention, however, and they both stopped and looked about, but saw nothing. They caught one anothers' eye and frowned eerily, then turned once more toward the building.


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER III

At the front desk, there sat a thirtyish, stoutish, blondish man wearing a security uniform, and his nametag said Hervé.

"Hervé, my good man, hello," the Doctor said boisterously as he attempted to blow past the desk. "John Smith, Mr. Beaumont is expecting me, thanks."

"Excuse me, sir," Hervé cut in. "Who? Who's expecting you?"

Stopping, but not returning to the desk, the Doctor said. "Don't tell me you've lost my appointment. No, no, please don't tell me that – I was having such a good day."

Martha tried to appear interested in the proceedings, but not confused.

"No, of course not, sir, I just need to verify…"

"I'm John Smith, I told you, and this is my assistant, Mirabella Bankhead," he told the man who was now on his feet and blustering. "Credentials please, Miss B."

The Doctor put his hands behind his back and tapped his toes in a show of impatience. Martha pulled the psychic paper from his pocket and handed it to the man. Of course, Hervé saw what he needed to see, and permitted them passage.

In the lift, she said, "Mirabella Bankhead? Are you kidding me?"

"I improvised," he shrugged.

"You sure did," she chuckled. "What, all the complicated Russian names were taken?"

"Did you want to be Jane Doe? Because I think John Smith and Jane Doe might actually raise a few eyebrows."

"What's wrong with Martha Jones?"

He smiled and pursed his lips, and crooned, "Aww, absolutely nothing!" He kissed her on the top of her head, and she actually pushed him away a bit.

"Oh, shut up."

* * *

Sauntering off the lift on the eighteenth floor with his hands in his pockets, the Doctor asked, "If you were a time-swallowing phenomenon with concentrated rippled effects enough to communicate with a sentient time-harbouring vehicle, where would you be?"

"Hiding in the broom cupboard, like everyone else," Martha muttered.

They looked in either direction, and on both sides they saw long hallways with some foliage marking the ends. They went left, the Doctor leading the way. Very soon, they found themselves in a portion of circular hallway that had been opened up like a rotunda. On the outsides, there were four flats, each marked with a letter. In the middle, there was a large planter holding a myriad of different kinds of tropical plant life.

The floors throughout were shiny, blond wood with chrome baseboards, sconces and handrails. The art on the walls was reminiscent of Mark Rothko – abstract, boxy, boring.

But what struck Martha, what made the décor interesting were the concrete borders surrounding the greenery, and the benches nearby. They were carved, swirly almost Victorian, like something one would find in an old cemetery…

This was all she had the chance to notice before she was knocked out. Or at least that's what she thought happened.

* * *

She seemed to come to. Funny thing was, she didn't feel any pain, and had no memory of being hit or attacked in any way. She got to her feet and checked her head for a bump, took stock of her body, looking for irregularities, aches, scratches – she found nothing. She looked about and found that she was back in the lobby of the building, and perhaps fifteen feet away, she saw Hervé sitting behind his desk, looking down.

"Whoa," she sighed, unable to help herself.

Hervé looked up. "Miss Bankhead," he said. "Is there a problem?"

"Er… no."

"Sorry I didn't see you come back, I was busy…" and he pointed under the canopy of his desk. Martha glanced over and saw a veritable sea of surveillance images, little boxes spread out over five screens, one of which seemed to be an image of a metal shelf sitting beside some buckets and and brooms.

"You have a surveillance camera in the broom cupboard?" she asked, chuckling.

"Well, there are people in and out of there all day long, and we've actually had some issues with theft," he said. "Industrial cleaner is a hot commodity, apparently. So, did Mr. Smith get off without you?"

"Er, no," she said. "I'm not sure what happened really. I guess I'd better go find him. Thanks for your help."

Vaguely, as she walked back toward the lift, she had the thought that one of the people in the surveillance images had on a blazer very similar to hers.

* * *

When she arrived on floor eighteen, she turned left and hurried down the hall into the rotunda area to catch up with the Doctor. She found him just around the little bend of the planter, examining a tropical fern. He seemed to be talking to himself.

He looked up at her through his specs and asked, "What do you think?"

"About what?" she asked.

"About what I just said," he answered. "This species of fern… mesozoic… ringing a bell?" He seemed a bit annoyed.

"Sorry no, I wasn't…" she gulped. "I wasn't here."

"What are you talking about? Of course you were here."

"Not while you were talking."

"Martha, I said two sentences."

She stared at him, then exasperatedly placed her hands on her hips. "You didn't notice I was gone?"

"What do you mean _gone_?"

"I mean, I was knocked unconscious and woke up in the lobby," she said.

"How long ago?"

"I don't know – five minutes."

"Are you all right?" he asked, reaching for her head

"Yeah, I'm fine. It's weird," she mused, moving away from him examining her for injuries. "I don't remember being hit or anything, and I don't have any bumps or scratches. But one second I was here, the next I was in the lobby with Hervé."

"How could you have been gone for five whole minutes, Martha? I _just_ saw you!"

"What?"

"We were walking around the planter, you were behind me. I saw this fern, thought it was a bit odd, so I glanced at you, knelt down, said that the plant nearly went extinct in the mesozoic era, and then looked up at you to get your opinion," he recounted impatiently. "And that's when this very strange conversation began."

"Is it possible that you talked for longer than you thought? You do that sometimes."

"No, Martha!" he insisted. "I said 'This is a bit strange – this plant went nearly extinct in the mesozoic era. We may have found our time discrepancy, what do you think?'. Those were my words!"

"All right," she said. "What the hell is going on?"

"No idea."


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV

"One more time," the Doctor said. He was leaning against a wall between flat doors, facing Martha. She was seated on one of the benches.

"Doctor, I've already told you the story twice," she whined, leaning forward and tugging at air in exasperation. "I don't know how many more ways I can say it."

"All right," he said, beginning to pace. "Something is swallowing pockets of time, but displacing spatial patterns as well. This considerably narrows down the phenomena that could be involved here."

"Good."

"But there are still a number of them."

"Of course there are."

"Except…" he said, pulling the sonic from inside his jacket and holding it up. He began to move, round the rotunda at a stride suited to his long legs, not to Martha's short ones. Sighing, she stood up to follow.

"You see, it's the _concentration_ of activity that's bothering me," he was saying, the sonic buzzing. "Massive amounts of time just going kerplooey…"

* * *

This time when Martha came to, she was standing in a whitewashed tunnel. She looked about, and all she could see were "exit" signs. She bellowed in frustration, swore, and followed the signs.

She found that she had been in the same Métro station from which she and the Doctor had emerged perhaps ten minutes before.

"What the hell?" she asked herself aloud, coming up the last step. "This is like… am I drunk? Maybe they poisoned my crème brûlée and it's something only humans are susceptible to…"

People were staring, but she didn't care. This phenomenon, she could see, was not a one-time occurrence, and it was going to become a serious nuisance.

"_Going_ to become?" she asked herself, in response to her own thought. "It's already a right bloody nuis… "

She had been following the same route back to the crescent shaped building, walking at a mightily brisk pace. She was stopped in mid-sentence, mid-thought, by a particularly welcome sight.

It was unmistakable, of course. The walk, the hair, the suit. Accept no substitute. And there he was, maybe fifty yards ahead, about to cross the plaza. Ah! So, perhaps he'd noticed she was gone this time and had come looking for her. Well, thank goodness she saw him before it was too late!

He stopped and began rooting around in his pocket and she saw the psychic paper come out. It did not register that _she_ currently had the psychic paper stashed in her own pocket.

"Doctor!" she cried out. She called so loud that her voice cracked and wavered a bit. It actually hurt.

But when the Doctor turned to look, Martha swore again, and it caused her to turn her back and begin swiftly crossing the street. Her heart was pounding and her mouth had gone dry. She caught her breath and leaned against a lightpost.

Because when the Doctor had looked to see who had called his name, the woman he'd been walking hand-in-hand with turned and looked as well. A woman in a green blazer and her favourite brown sandals.

* * *

When she re-entered the building's lobby, Hervé looked up. "Miss Bankhead! Are you actually having trouble finding the lift?"

"Listen, Hervé," she said. "How many times have you seen me now?"

"Well, just once," he said.

"I mean today."

"Me too. I keep thinking you're going to go up in the lift, but you keep…" he laughed. "…you keep winding up back here in front of my desk somehow. So how can I help you?"

"Never mind. There's only one man who can help me," she sighed. "Unfortunately, he keeps turning his back."

This time, she decided to take the stairs. It was eighteen floors, but rushing, at this point, hadn't done her any good, so she might as well get on the slow path. Besides, another of her selves might be on the lift right now. She couldn't risk running into one of them. "No, no," she said to herself, climbing, rounding floor three. "Because that would make things _complicated_." She chuckled ruefully.

After the eighth floor, she was so intent on the process of climbing and protesting against her rapidly tiring legs, that she didn't notice the ruckus coming from the metal stairs above. At floor eleven, she was startled when the Doctor appeared suddenly in front of her, almost mowing her down as he made his bulldozing descent of the stairs.

She cried out in surprise. He grabbed her to keep her from falling backwards, then pulled her in for a hug.

"Doctor!"

"Martha!" he hurled back. "It happened again!"

"Yes, I know! How long have I been gone?"

"A minute, maybe a tad more."

"For me, it's been ten or twelve."

"Really? I started scanning for temporal activity and when I turned around, you were gone. Figured I'd see if you were in the lobby like last time. Took the stairs 'cause the lift took too long – well, seven seconds, but still."

"Well, I'm glad I found you. Again."

"Again?"

"Yeah, this time when I came to or whatever, I was in the Métro station where we came in. I came up out of the tunnels and started walking here, and I _saw you_!"

"You saw me?"

"Walking toward the building across the square," she said, her voice raising in pitch. She took a deep breath. "So I called out to you, and my voice was all hoarse, and when you turned to look…"

"You saw yourself."

"Yes! It was so eerie!"

"We heard a voice calling my name in the square when we first arrived, remember?"

"Yes!"

"But we didn't see anyone," he said. "Where did you go?"

"As soon as I realised what I'd done, I crossed the street."

"Good move. Still, I'm surprised I didn't see you."

"Well, I was in a crowd."

He smiled. "You stand out in a crowd, Martha. To me, anyway."

"Ugh," she groaned. "That was bad."

"I know," he said giddily. "But it's true." He took her by the shoulders and kissed her squarely, briefly.

"So, you were coming down to the lobby to find me?"

"Yep."

"Okay, you found me. Now what do we do?"

"Please, have you met me? I'm going to talk."

* * *

A quick consult of the directory on the eleventh floor told them that the property manager resided on the fifth floor in the G suite. As they exited the lift on floor five, they turned right, and immediately noticed that floor five was laid out and decorated in exactly the same way as floor eighteen. Martha knocked on the door, as the Doctor was distracted once again by a plant. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, regarding the planter quizzically.

"What's wrong now? A breed of palm that doesn't grow in this solar system?"

"No," he said. "It's the Hydrangeas. I love hydrangeas, especially the blue ones."

When the door opened, they came into contact with a man who looked very Mediterranean. Prominent nose, dark eyes, slicked-back hair, wearing a burnt orange, fitted jumper. He was holding a cigarette in his hand, and without a touch of annoyance, he said, "Yes?"

"Hello, I'm the Doctor and this is Martha Jones," the Time Lord said, stepping forward boisterously the shake the man's hand. "Mind if we have a word with you?"

"Not at all," he said. "My name is Gérardin. Shall we chat inside?"

"Thank you," the Doctor said, taking Martha's hand and accepting Gérardin's invite.

The flat was spectacular, but decorated very much like the hallways. Blond wood floors or tan carpets, touches of chrome, tropical foliage.

"So, I assume you are interested in a flat here," their host said. "Please have a seat."

The Doctor and Martha sat side-by-side on a tan, crescent-shaped sofa, and the Doctor said, looking around, "So, I'll go out on a limb and guess that it's you who hired the decorator for the building."

"Indeed," Gérardin said, handing them each a bottle of water, then seating himself across from them. "I am partial owner. My business partner does not live on-site, so I take care of the property. And I can assure you, it is well cared-for, from the cobbles outside to the fertilised soil in our planters. So, you are a doctor?"

"I am," answered the Doctor. "Just moved to town. Need a place to live."

"Just come from London, I estimate," Gérardin commented with a knowing smile. "And you, Miss Jones?"

"Same for me," she said.

"Ah! Both doctors, what a lovely couple," Gérardin cried out, clapping his hands. He put his cigarette out in an ashtray that looked like a Picasso painting, and then pushed it aside with contempt. "You will fit in here nicely. Everyone in the building is a young professional, and most of the couples are unmarried. Do you mind my asking if you are married?"

"No, we're not," the Doctor answered.

"Lovely," he said. "So, would you like a tour of one of the residences? We have a few vacancies."

"Well, perhaps later," said the Doctor. "Before we do that, though, let's talk about safety."

"We have a state-of-the-art, twenty-four-hour surveillance system," Gérardin assured him. "And we screen our security carefully."

"Yeah, Hervé," the Doctor commented. "Boy, nothing gets past that one. But that's not what I mean. I mean, are there any… disturbances?"

"Disturbances? Do you mean, like, barking dogs, people fighting?"

"No, more just… you know, disturbances. People disappearing. Things going _bump_ in the night. Scary stories."

Gérardin looked at the Doctor with some concern, and when he changed his gaze to Martha, she said, "The Doctor is extremely superstitious. This is the fourth building we've been to – he keeps insisting they're haunted by the spirits of insurrectionists."

"I'm quirky," the Doctor said with a little nose wrinkle.

Gérardin reached into a drawer in the giant ottoman that doubled as a coffee table, and pulled out another cigarette and a fancy lighter. He meticulously lit his cigarette, slowly closed the top of the lighter, and took a long drag, letting the smoke drift at a leisurely pace from between his lips. He didn't make eye contact during all of this, and for a few seconds after.

At last, he looked up at them with a very serious expression. His light tone had gone quite dark when he said, "I think I know what you mean, Doctor."

"You do?"

"About the disturbances, yes."

"Tell me."

"For that, you need to talk to Thierret," Gérardin said.

"Who's that?" asked the Doctor.

"Yann Thierret, he's the landscape architect who designed the planters in the hallways," he said.

"You think the plants have got something to do with it?" asked Martha.

"Well, it was when he brought in all that stonework that the trouble began."


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER V

Gérardin shut the door behind his guests, and the Doctor said, "Keep your back against the wall."

"Excuse me?" she asked nervously, obeying.

"You don't want to get snuck-up-on again," he said. "Cover me." He stepped forward toward the planter.

"Cover you?" she repeated.

"Just keep your eyes open," he muttered. "Try not to blink."

Martha's heart leapt into her throat. "Try not to…" Her jaw hung slack after that, and her eyes glazed over with _ugh, not that rubbish again_.

He looked at her through piercing brown eyes. "The trouble began when the stonework came in. You've been losing time," he said. He parted two large palm leaves in order to see into the planter. "And there are at least two weeping cherubs in here."

He reached into the foliage and emerged holding a little statue of a chubby cherub, hiding its eyes. It was maybe twelve inches tall, and matched the Victorian swirls of the planter and benches all around.

"Oh my God," she groaned.

"Well, don't worry too much," he said lightly, setting the thing down upon a bench. "I mean, how much time did you lose? Five minutes the first time? Ten the second time?"

He scanned over the cherub with the sonic, and then commented, "Yep, here they are again – the little angels. They're almost cute, aren't they?"

"If you say so."

"Oh, come on, Martha," he urged. "It's not like they pack the punch of their older cousins. Unless you were planning to die of a heart attack in the next fifteen minutes anyway, the touch of a cherub can't kill you. Just irritate you."

"Says the man who hasn't been touched yet," she said, crossing her arms in annoyance.

"Only trouble is," he mused, stepping free of the planter area. "Eighteen floors, two planters on each, minus the lobby and the absent thirteenth floor, that's probably at least sixty-four of these things, and that's assuming that there's only two in each planter. That's a hell of a lot of time being eaten."

"Hence the TARDIS' alert," she said.

"We need to find a place to sort of set up camp," he said. "Out of sight of these things. You know, so we can draw up a battle plan."

"Well, maybe we can convince people we're the police," she suggested. "I've still got the psychic paper…"

She patted down her jacket and trousers, and felt the little wallet in her back pocket, and dug for it. She had looked away for a few seconds, and when she looked up, the Doctor had vanished.

Martha set her jaw in exasperation and waited. Seconds later, he emerged from the lift down the hall, soaking wet.

"Wound up in the pool," he called to her. "It was embarrassing – they were having a party."

Martha kept her back to the wall and made her way round to the main hallway. The Doctor covered one end of the hall, Martha the other. They backed into the lift together.

"How do we stop these things?" she asked, doors closed, lift still.

"We just have to confine them," he said. "Put them away. Beter still, lock them up. Better still…" his eyes grew wide. "Ooooh."

"What?"

"Remember how we trapped them before? The big ones I mean, at Wester Drumlins in the cellar?"

"Tricked them into looking at each other."

"Yeah. We have to do that again."

"But there's so many of them!"

"Then we'll have to be systematic about it. Now where can we lock them up?"

Martha stepped forward and hit the button on the lift. "I might know a place."

* * *

"Hello again," Hervé said, grinning. "Miss Bankhead, looking lovely as always."

"Hi," she said. "Can you show me that screen again, the one that shows the inside of the cupboard?"

Hervé looked at her sceptically. "Why?"

"Sorry, classified."

Hervé cocked an eyebrow.

"Seriously," she assured him.

"By whose orders?" the guard asked.

"The, er, King of Belgium," said the Doctor. "Miss Bankhead, credentials again please."

"No, I saw your credentials the first time," Hervé said. "I remember. But I'm going to have to call Monsieur Gérardin."

"We've just been to see him," the Doctor said, smiling. "Lovely man. He liked us!"

"You've been to see him," Hervé worked out. "After you saw… who was it?"

"Mm? Oh, the fellow who was waiting for us! Beaumont on ten. Another lovely, _lovely_ man."

"I'm not sure I know him."

"New to the building, new to the area, as a matter of fact," the Doctor said, beginning his machine-gun-like speech pattern. "Came from Aix-en-Provence, he did, and he and Gérardin, well, they're great friends since childhood. Anyway, Beaumont wanted to do something about the smell in his flat – call it new-flat smell – so some fumigators were called in and found that there was a termite infestation, so they fumigated with the help of some exterminators. But then Beaumont found that the exterminators had stolen some of his property, so he wanted to sue them and he asked for Gérardin's help, but Gérardin didn't want to get involved in a lawsuit – public image and all that, especially with the termite business. That's nasty. Do you know what termites can do to property? Do you know how fast they can eat up your life? Oh, Hervé I could tell you stories. This one flat I lived in, in Chelsea, it had…"

"Stop right there," Hervé said, holding up one hand. "Are you insane?"

"Absolutely not. I'm just doing what needs to be done. Unfortunately, because of the delicate nature of the termite problem and the potent chemicals… well, I really shouldn't say anymore. It's an under-your-hat kind of affair."

"What's it got to do with the King of Belgium?"

"Oh, everything, Hervé!" the Doctor said loudly. "Haven't you been paying attention, kid? Blimey! All right, listen. When Beaumont was working as an actuary back in Sussex…"

"Never mind," Hervé stopped him. "Just… stop talking. He gave you permission?"

"Who?"

"Gérardin. He gave you permission to be in the broom cupboard?"

"'Course he did! Why else would we be here? Do you really think we would flash fake credentials at you just so that we could look inside some stupid cupboard? I don't know about you, Miss Bankhead, but I have better things to do with _my _time." Martha nodded heartily in agreement. "So, Hervé, my boy, mind letting us do our jobs, and telling us where this cupboard is?"

With a frown, Hervé said, "Basement, door opposite the lift."

"Thanks, Hervé," the Doctor said, slapping the guard on the shoulder. "You've done a good thing."

As they turned to go, they heard a loud, but familiar noise. Their eyes were drawn to the south wall, which was essentially all windows. They saw the Doctor himself running past, at full speed, a brown streak of screaming frustration. As his voice died down, the travellers looked at each other.

"Was that…?" Martha asked.

"Me? Yeah," the Doctor answered, sighing.

"Blimey."

"It's going to be a long day."

* * *

"You go left, I'll go right," Martha said as she stepped off the lift for what felt like the eightieth time that day. They were back on the eighteenth floor – they had decided to start at the top of the building and work their way down.

"No, I think it's best if we stick together," he corrected. "More eyes means less chance of a cherubic zap."

They both went left, and they each reached into the planter and extracted, very carefully, a stone cherub.

"It's heavy," Martha said. "Hard to believe they can move so fast."

"But they can, so just be careful," he said, staring intently at the sculpture-that-wasn't-a-sculpture in his hands. "Okay. Lift. Keep the little angel where you can see him."

This was considerably more difficult for Martha than for the Doctor, as holding a thirty-pound block of concrete away from her body required upper-body strength that she simply did not possess. But she didn't say anything just now. She resolved to look about for a trolley or something once they were inside the broom cupboard.

They took the lift down to the basement, and as promised, a door just opposite was labeled _broom cupboard._ The Doctor sonicked it open, and then sonicked the camera before they walked into its sight."

"Doctor, if you break the camera, he'll come down here," Martha said.

"I didn't break it, I froze it," he said. "He'll just see a freeze-frame of that shelf. Until the end of time, if I wanted. Follow me."

The Doctor walked deep into the closet, into the darkness, and began scanning the walls with the sonic.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm looking for the least thick wall, the loosest bricks, et cetera," he answered. "Ah ha. Here we go."

He got close to the wall and concentrated the sonic beam on two bricks low to the ground. He pushed on them and they moved surprisingly easily. Beyond them, the Doctor and Martha saw pipes. "Well, little angels," he said. "Welcome to your new home."

They set the little angels down on the floor. They backed up several steps and regarded them. They were now standing a good ten feet from the angels.

"Okay," the Doctor said in a loud whisper. "On the count of three, blink. We'll do it together. Ready?"

"Wait! Why?" she wanted to know.

"Because we have to get them to come after us so they'll uncover their eyes."

She sighed. "Okay. But if I wind up in someone's bathtub fifteen minutes ago, I shall be very cross."

"Oh, just do it. Ready?"

On his count, they blinked at the same time. Both angels had uncovered their eyes and had their hands reaching out toward Martha and the Doctor, their faces set in childish surprise.

"Wow, it worked," Martha remarked. "Maybe this won't be so hard."

"You know," the Doctor mused. "It occurs to me that we could just bring the other angels down here and let these two watch over them. We don't have to do this with all of them!"

"Hm," she said. "Nice idea. Let's do it. Maybe we can catch lunch."

They each picked up a cherub and placed it in the hole, then the Doctor turned them to face one another. They left the cupboard and shut the door behind them.

* * *

When they reached the eighteenth floor this time, they were greeted by an eerie sight.

Two more angels sat on the carpet, hiding their eyes, about five feet from where the lift door opened. They were waiting.


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI

The two waiting angels were not a huge problem. The Doctor and Martha simply picked them up and took them downstairs, then stashed them in the hole with the others. They tricked these two into showing their eyes as well, and now all four were facing each other. From now on, they'd really be able to have these four watching over the rest.

Martha cast about for something with wheels that they could use to move the stone angels about. She found a two-wheeled dolly and brought it back outside the cupboard.

"Good idea," said the Doctor.

She nodded. "Make things slightly faster."

"Floor seventeen?" he asked, pressing the button to call the lift.

"Yep, although," Martha answered. "I'm a little worried that someone will find them." She turned away from the lift and peeked through the ajar cupboard door.

"We'll seal up the wall, Martha," he assured her, joining her at the cupboard door. "No-one's just going to _happen_ to go busting throught that wall. Unless they're looking for them, and in that case, the little angels will be the least of our worries."

"Seal up the wall," she mused.

"Yeah, what of it?"

"It's just…" she sighed. "Seems kind of mean. Like burying them alive. It's not like you."

Now it was his turn to sigh. "I know. I thought about that too. But what choice do we have?"

"I suppose."

The lift went _ding_.

* * *

Next thing Martha knew, she was standing on the streets of _La Défense_ in Paris once more, looking up at the crescent-shaped building two blocks away.

Her body went limp in resignation. This time, she didn't say anything, she just walked stubbornly back to the building, and found the Doctor in the lobby.

"How long have you been here?" she asked.

"Been waiting about five minutes for you," he answered. "That was _after_ I got zapped into a café two streets over."

"Same time as me?"

"Basement, talking about sealing up the angels, heard a ding?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Yep. Me too," he confirmed.

"So, this time they'd got into the lift?" she asked.

"Yep," he said, taking her hand and beginning to move back toward the lift once more. "I guess we don't press the button without one of us having at least one eye on the doors."

When the doors opened, no-one was inside the lift, neither flesh nor stone.

* * *

On the seventeeth floor, the angels were in disarray, as though they had tried to move and got caught.

"There are only three," Martha said. "Where's the other?"

"I don't know," the Doctor muttered. "But let's split up. More eyes in more places."

"Okay," she said. She walked toward one of the statues and heaved it into her arms, as its friend stood nearby, not watching, but aware. "Find the other yet?"

"No," he said. "Wait, there it…"

And then he stopped talking. Martha peered over into the area where he'd been searching through the planter, and saw that he had vanished. She rolled her eyes at the occasional idiocy of the cleverest man in the universe, and backed up to the lift.

"Uh-oh," she muttered to herself. There were still three more angels, on-alert, on this floor, plus the lift door was about to open. She thought perhaps she could put her back up against the wall opposite and keep these little guys in her peripheral vision while she made sure that no angels were on the lift as it opened, and then she could run really fast into the open lift (or, at least as fast as she could with a thrity-pound hunk of stone in her arms). Yes, that would work. Now, how to get turned that way, so as not to turn away from the angels that were already here…

* * *

She'd got lucky before now, and had thus far only found herself standing on the streets or in a Métro station. A bit weird, but no-one had noticed. But this time, she opened her eyes and was standing, literally, in the middle of someone's picnic, carrying a stone angel in her arms.

"Shit!" she spat.

A boy, perhaps five years old, gasped. His mother grabbed him and put him in her lap as the adults gaped at her.

"Sorry," she recovered. "_Really_ sorry." She tried to step gingerly away from their food, but only succeeded in overturning a bowl of cut fruit. She began to walk determinedly away, and as an afterthought, she turned and said, "Really _really_ sorry!"

She was relieved to see that the building was only a half-block away, but had been obscured by trees. The angel was starting to get heavy, and briefly she contemplated leaving it on a busy thoroughfare where it would never be alone.

But she discarded that thought. She knew it was irresponsible and that the Doctor would disapprove. So she carried on. As she approached the building, she saw herself and the Doctor in the lobby, discussing the last time they'd been zapped. She waited until they disappeared, and then she went inside. As she did so, _another_ Doctor came out from behind the wall leading to the weight room. They didn't speak this time, he simply took the angel from her, and they headed toward the stairs. As they passed Hervé, whose jaw was simply agape now, he grinned and put one finger over his mouth to keep him silent.

* * *

With one more angel stashed away, Martha and the Doctor took the dolly on-board the lift.

"There will be three more on the seventeenth floor," she said. "Plus, there was at least one more on the lift when it opened behind me."

"This is getting messy," he said. "They're winning!"

"How are they winning?"

"We've been zapped _how _many times now, and we've only got five of them contained," he sighed heavily. "We're bound to cross timelines with ourselves sooner or later, get into trouble somehow... I mean, more than usual. We can't risk the wrong version of me going off in the TARDIS with the wrong version of you at the end of all this. That means two of you will exist, maybe two of me, and it could get paradoxical."

"At least I'm in my own time," she shrugged. "I _could_ just go home."

"That's even worse!"

"Okay, okay, relax – I was just thinking out loud. I wouldn't be able to do that anyway, I'd be heartbroken and not thinking straight," she insisted. "If you're so worried about it, then, let's say that whatever happens, we meet back at the hotel _in our room_ tomorrow at noon, but only the FINAL versions of ourselves, the ones who are finished with this rubbish and are ready to leave Paris. Yes?"

"Yes. Good plan." He kissed the top of her head as the lift doors opened.

On the seventeeth floor, when they exited once again, they saw no angels. They glanced at each other and each went a different direction.

Even walking around the planter, Martha didn't see the angels. After a minute or two, she did hear a woman's voice, however.

"There you are, you fiend!" she was saying.

"Excuse me?" she could hear the Doctor ask.

"Weirdo! Pervert! I'm calling security!" the woman's voice screamed.


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER VII

Martha forgot herself for a moment and ran to see what the ruckus was over. By the time she arrived, there was a tall, thin, middle-aged blonde woman standing alone, shivering, pointing at open space. She was wearing a peach-coloured negligée, and was holding it closed at the collar. Her eyes shifted, after a moment, to Martha.

"Did you… did you see… again, he…" she panted.

"Yeah," Martha said. "He just disappeared, eh?"

"That's the second time he's done that!"

Martha's eyes were darting around the area, trying to locate the angel that had zapped the Doctor just now. "He does that sometimes," she said absently. "He's a bit special."

"Special?" the woman shrieked. "That's not special! That's downright unnatural! It's weird! It's… it's… God, I must be hallucinating!"

"That's probably it. You're just under some stress, so, let's get you calmed down," Martha said, taking the woman's arm. "Is there someone in the building who could make you some tea and look after you for a bit?"

"My friend Catherine is down on four," the woman said.

"Let's go knock on her door, eh?"

* * *

The Doctor found himself across the street and behind the building.

"Argh!" he growled in frustration.

He walked to the corner of the busy avenue, tapped his rubber-clad toe as he waited for the signal to change, and like a civilised pedestrian, came across the street.

What was up with that woman? What had he done to scare her so badly? She'd called him a pervert – why? (He'd been called many, many things, many, many times, but _pervert_ was something he'd only heard once in a great blue moon, and never with this face…)

By the time he'd sonicked open one of the back doors and ran up the stairs and reached floor seventeen, he was exhausted and panting, but he would not stop. He went back to where that woman had been, hoping to find her once more shouting at him. The sooner he could explain himself, the better off they'd all be.

But his timing was a bit off. He was early. Only, he didn't quite realise it yet.

He found the woman's flat with the door slightly ajar, and he peeked inside. "Madame?" he asked, still panting. "Hello?"

He pushed the door open a bit and was greeted by a strange, strange sight. He couldn't help himself, he walked toward it…

But once inside the flat, he heard a noise and his eyes were drawn. A tall, blonde, middle-aged woman was coming down the hall humming, drying her hair with a towel, her peach-coloured robe hanging wide open. Underneath, she was…

_Well, now I can see why she called me a pervert_, he thought in the split second before she looked up and screamed.

"Oh!" he panted. "Oh God!"

_Really, could this get any more disgusting?_ he asked himself.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she shouted, pulling her robe closed.

"No, no, let me explain!" he insisted, still breathing hard, his hands out defensively in front of him.

"Explain? Explain? I'll kill you! I have a gun and I'm not af…"

* * *

Across the plaza from the building.

Yielding some strange looks from passers-by.

Clearly an angel had been hiding behind the door of the woman's flat! And clearly, he had scared that woman up on seventeen, but twice now, the angels would not give him a chance to talk his way out of it, or find out what she had to do with any of this, or investigate that truly strange sight he'd come across in her flat… or anything! The angels were not letting him do his job!

A great frustration bubbled up within his chest and he began to run toward the building, yelling at the top of his lungs.

Again, some strange looks.

As he neared the building, however, he saw himself and Martha in the lobby talking to Hervé. God, what a mess! He screamed again, and ran past the lobby windows, and it only occurred to him later that he had seen himself doing this, just before going back up to eighteen to begin stashing the angels away. He sonicked open the back entrance once more (or for the first time, depending upon perception), and went to wait in a safe little toilet cubicle. He kept an eye on the time until he thought enough minutes had passed that the frightened woman had seen him disappear for the second time. He willed Martha to get the woman out of the way so that they could continue their work on the seventeeth floor.

He wandered out to the lobby and asked Hervé to borrow the phone.

"First you tell me what the hell is going on," Hervé said. "Who are you, really?"

The Doctor sighed. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me," the man said angrily. "You keep showing up in the lobby, occasionally there are two of you at once… I'd say you were a twin, but your friend Miss Bankhead seems to be a twin as well, and what are the odds of that?"

"Trust me, Hervé, you're better off not knowing."

"Then no phone."

"Fine," the Doctor said. "I'm the Doctor. I'm a time-traveller, and so is… well, her name isn't Bankhead, it's Jones. Martha Jones. We're investigating those stone angels in the planters upstairs because they have the power to mess with time. They touch people and zap them back a few minutes, which is what's causing us to be in two places at once… or in one place at two times. The concentration of time being eaten is causing a temporal disturbance, and any number of horrible things could happen here if we don't solve the problem."

He had spoken in a very even tone, uncharacteristically calmly, and without the usual crazed look in his eye.

But it hadn't helped.

"Whatever," Hervé said. "Don't tell me, then."

"You asked, I gave you the truth. I told you you wouldn't believe me."

"Whatever," Hervé repeated, throwing the phone up onto the raised platform around his desk. "Just make your damn phone call and get out of my sight."

"Thanks," muttered the Doctor, dialling Martha's mobile.

"Doctor?" she asked desperately.

"Martha! Where are you, what's happening?"

"I'm behind the building," she said.

"How did you get there? Did you get that lady out of the way, the one in the robe?"

"Her name's Nicolette. Yeah, I took her down to the fourth floor to stay with a friend, and on my way out, I got zapped," she explained.

"And that was _after_ she found me in the hallway and called me a pervert?"

"Yeah," she confirmed. "But Doctor, I think there's something you need to see."

"I think there's something you need to see too," he told her.

"It's a bit grotesque," she whined. "It makes me a little sick…"

"Martha, up on seventeen, in that woman's flat…"

"No, you first," she said. "Come find me. Please."


	8. Chapter 8

**Okay, it's short but sweet, and has a quality cliffhanger, so please forgive. Besides brevity is the soul of wit. :-)**

* * *

CHAPTER VIII

The Doctor came out through the back door, and went around a corner to find Martha staring sadly at a pile of broken, splintered stone. As he got closer, he could see the shape of a frightened little angel face, split in half, lying amid a thousand other pieces.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Martha," he said, pulling her in close.

"Is it dead?" she asked, hiding her eyes from it against the Doctor's lapels.

"I should think so," he said. "Its molecular integrity will have been totally compromised."

"Couldn't we fix it?"

"Fix the covalent bonds between the atoms?" he asked. "I'd need a hundred years and a sonic screwdriver about five times more powerful and ten times more precise."

Martha made a noise against his chest in protest, but she didn't say anymore.

He looked up. He was not surprised at what he saw, but his hearts began to pound anyway. "Martha, I think we need to move out of the way," he said, stepping carefully, guiding her back toward the door he'd just come through.

"Why?"

"Look up."

And then she saw what he'd seen. Another little angel was poised in the seventeeth story window, ready to fly.

She opened her mouth and squeaked, but nothing articulate came out.

They looked at each other meaningfully, and then realised at exactly the same time that they had taken their eyes away from it. In a few seconds, another explosion of stone sounded at their feet, forcing them to jump back, to avoid being hit.

"Oh my God!" Martha shrieked, looking away again. It was, to her, almost as bad as seeing soft guts and gore all over the pavement. These things were alive – and now they were splattering themselves from seventeen stories up. "Doctor, what are they doing?"

"Blimey, they weren't trying to get us," the Doctor hissed. "All that time, they were trying to escape! We were just getting in their way!"

"Escape? From us?"

He nodded. "I was just about to tell you, in Nicolette's flat, well, I went in there because I saw five angels in there, gathered round the window, having smashed it. One of them must have been behind the door because it got me before could stop the others, or explain to Nicolette that I wasn't a sex offender."

Martha was breathing hard now. She moved away from the building and looked up. "Stop!" she cried out, seeing the next angel poised to jump. "This isn't the way!"

He joined her. "Let us help you!" he called. "Stay where you are, and let us help! No more death, no more time shifts! Just give us a chance to help!"

Martha stood frozen, looking up, trying not to blink. He put his hands on her shoulders tried to push her toward the door. "Doctor…" she whined.

"Look away, Martha," he whispered.

"I can't," she insisted.

"Just look away," he said. "If it doesn't jump, then we'll know it heard me."

"But what if it does?"

"Then we'll try again," he said. "But we can't just stand here forever. And we can't go back upstairs until we know for sure whether they're going to listen to us. They're desperate now – the risk is too great. Either they'll destroy themselves or they'll start getting violent against _us_."

"What? How?"

"They can start swallowing bigger chunks of time and sending us further away, and turn this whole thing into an even bigger problem for us than it already is."

Reluctantly, and with a deep breath, she took her eyes from the seventeenth story window and allowed the Doctor to lead her away from the area. They waited for another explosion of stone, but none came. They looked at each other for a few seconds. "That's a good sign," he said.

She nodded, tears in her eyes. "Doctor, we can't just lock them up in the basement. It's too cruel."

"I know, you're right," he said. "We need the TARDIS."

* * *

The time travellers hopped back on the Métro (not all travelling requires vortex manipulation), as the blue box was still parked just off Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle.

"But what are you going to do?" Martha wanted to know as they stepped through the turnstyle and immediately onto the train.

"Well, get them out of here, find them a home," he shrugged, looking over her head distractedly.

"Where?"

"I'm working on it," he said, mumbling. "Patience, Miss Jones."

* * *

They materialised in the basement of the building, and the Doctor looked very earnest as he asked Martha to bring the four original cherubs aboard. They put them inside the TARDIS facing one another, and then he went back to the console and began to fire it up.

"Er, do you have a plan that I don't know about?" she asked.

"I'm starting to have one."

She waited, but he didn't say anything. She could see the wheels turning, so, irritating as it was, she chose to continue to wait.

"Martha!" he exclaimed at last, almost startling her. "Let me borrow your mobile!"

She frowned and extracted it from her pocket, handing it to him.

As he dialled, he said to her, "Go ahead and start bringing the others in here. I'll catch up with you in a few minutes."

"Okay," she agreed, still frowning.

As she walked out of the TARDIS, she heard the Doctor say, "Jack! It's me! I need your help."


	9. Chapter 9

**This is the second-to-last chapter, and I hope you like where it's going/gone. My idea for the mini-angels was sort of the driving force, the fact that they are all little and cute and a nuisance and they annoy the crap out of the Doctor and Martha. The solution to the problem, I think, is pretty clever (even if I do say so myself), but not the point of the story. As always, I love feedback!!**

* * *

CHAPTER IX

A horrible banging-clanging sound came from beneath the floor, and Captain Jack Harkness began throwing all manner of debris out from underneath the water tower. A hose, some hand-held medical instruments, some discarded time equipment…

"Biscuit tin?" asked Jack to himself. "Who the hell was having a snack down here?"

"Jack? What are you doing?" asked Gwen, putting on her jacket, coming round the corner. Her boss had pulled up an entire floor panel underneath the giant column which connected the Hub directly with a rift in time and space, and was fully _inside_ the hole, rooting around for God knew what. Only very recently, they had used this very tower as a hitching post to tow the Earth back home. And now, suddenly, Jack seemed to be treating it like a university student's backseat.

"Hunh?" he asked, before thinking. "Oh. Nothing. Just go home – you've earned a night off."

"Jack, if this is something that we all need to be in on…" she warned, putting a finger out toward him in an authoritative fashion.

"It's not," he assured her.

"If you're hiding something…"

"I'm not! I'm just doing a favour for the Doctor. Truth be told, I'm not sure _what _I'm doing."

She looked down. "Holy God, there's a whole room down there!"

"Yeah," Jack said absently. "One of the Hub supervisors back in the old days used to sleep down here sometimes, until the rift's energy started giving him nightmares."

"Nightmares?"

"Mm," Jack said, still throwing stuff out. "Wouldn't have been so bad, except he was hacking livestock to death in his sleep as a side-effect. Torchwood wound up paying the farmers of Wales a healthy sum."

"Ew," Gwen commented, nose crinkled. "So, are you sure you don't need help?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Go have dinner with your husband for once."

Just then, an otherworldly whooshing sounded across the insides of the Torchwood Hub.

"What the hell is that?" Gwen shouted.

Jack responded with a delighted cackle. "I never get tired of that sound!"

The TARDIS materialised in the white-panelled medical bay, and Jack struck a pose, leaning over the bannister toward the top of the winding stairs. When the Doctor and Martha emerged, however, they didn't seem to see him.

"This is cool," Martha commented. "It's like state-of-the-art, but alien."

"That's exactly what it is, yeah," the Doctor sighed. "Too bad they lost their medic."

"A-hem," Jack said.

They looked up, not surprised. "Hey, Jack," Martha chirped. "Looking good."

"Well, yeah," he retorted, as if to say _duh!_ "Right back at you, Miss Jones."

"Have you got a space for me?" asked the Doctor.

"I think so," said Jack. "We just have to find a way to seal it."

"I'm good at sealing things. Show me," he said, taking the stairs two at a time.

"I'll show you," Gwen said, before Jack could answer.

"You're just determined to be at the centre of things, aren't you?" Jack smiled.

"Why would I let _you_ have all the fun?" She winked at the Doctor, who smirked.

Jack came down the stairs. "What's going on? He was so cryptic on the phone."

"Oh, he's just preoccupied. Come in and see," Martha said, pushing the TARDIS door open.

Jack stepped inside, and was greeted by the sight of seventy stone cherubs, four of whom were overseeing the others. They were crowded into the console room as though the console itself were a conductor's platform, and they were an orchestra. "Whoa! What are they?"

"They're weeping angels," Martha said. "We found them in Paris. They feed on potential time energy, and if they touch you, you get zapped back in time."

"Touch you?"

"Yep," she told him. "They can only move if they're not being observed. That's why their friends have to watch over them. We tried locking them in the basement of the building, but then they started, well… sort of committing suicide, so we decided to try something else."

"They can move if they're not seen? That's… insane!"

"I know!" she agreed. "We ran into their bigger, badder cousins a couple of years ago. Those things will set you back _years_ – much more dangerous. These guys are just annoying."

"They're kinda cute," Jack said, leaning on the rail. "Although, Martha, I have to say… what we have planned for them here isn't a whole lot better than locking them in a basement."

"I know," she sighed. "But at least it's a basement with amenities."

Jack nodded. Then, he switched subjects. "So how are things with you and…" he gestured out the door with his head.

"Fine," she said coyly, suddenly becoming an adolescent with rolling eyes and a cheek-to-shoulder magnet.

"Fine?" he asked. "What were you doing in Paris?"

"_That_ is none of your business, Captain Jack Harkness," Martha teased.

"Have you seen a single tourist attraction?" he asked with a big, naughty smile.

"Yes!" she insisted.

"Ones you can't see through your hotel window from the bed?"

"Jack!"

"Well?"

"Jack, leave her alone," Gwen was saying as she entered the TARDIS with the Doctor in tow. The two men met each others' eyes, and the Time Lord gave Jack a look that suggested tedium. _What am I going to do with you?_ he seemed to be asking.

Gwen strode out to the console platform and put her hands out at her sides, and faced her friends at the door. "This is the coolest thing I've ever seen!"

"And we thank you for your support," the Doctor said, making his way round the platform. "Now! Let's get these babies out of here."

"Where are they going?" asked Martha.

"Follow me," he said, picking up one of the cherubs and making his way back to the door. Martha, Jack and Gwen did likewise, and followed the Doctor to a large, empty space underneath the water tower.

***

Once all of the cherubs were in the space, the four of them stood back with their hands on their hips. Some faint light was coming through from above, and the sight of so many stone angels was rather eerie, like a graveyard. Moreover, Martha and the Doctor were utterly exhausted, this having been the second time they had moved all seventy angels by hand. It occurred to all of them at different times that they could and should move the TARDIS a bit closer to the column, but no-one voiced the idea, so it went untried.

"Is it just me, or is there a hum down here?" Martha asked.

"Not just you," Jack said. "What you're hearing is the rift."

"Energy from the rift bleeds," the Doctor said. "Remember the 'pit stop?' Well, the energy that it bleeds is _time_. Remember how I told you that time exists in blocks and is almost tangible? Well, occasionally, it can get splintered, especially around a rift. When time energy get splintered in some other parts of the universe where there's a rift, some of the excess comes right through here." He explained, and gestured to a giant ball that seemed to come out of the ceiling, above which was the giant water tower, connected to the rift. Purple pulses of powdery light were coming from it, like sonar waves.

The Doctor saw her eyeing this phenomenon and told her, "That's it. That's what the angels need."

She pointed. "The purple stuff?"

"Purple, such as it is," he replied.

"I think I get it."


	10. Chapter 10

**The final chapter. I hope the metaphor here brings closure to you as it has to the Doctor and Martha. And I hope you had fun! Thanks for reading!**

* * *

CHAPTER X

The Doctor sonicked the floor panel, locking seventy stone cherubs underneath the water tower at the Torchwood Hub.

"Are you sure this is the right thing to do?" Martha asked him.

"Well, you and I can't look after them," he said. "Besides, if we let them live in the TARDIS, it would make her weaker because they'd always be snacking on the vortex in the heart."

"Don't worry, Martha – we've got room," Jack assured her easily. "They'll be fine."

"Isn't it kind of dark in there?"

"It's perfect," he said. "No chance of them seeing each other. They can shuffle about to their little hearts' content."

"How long do they live?" she asked.

"Well, the big guys are millions of years old," the Doctor told her. "But I know almost nothing about the little ones. I'd assume a few hundred thousand years…"

Martha groaned.

"Martha, there was no choice," he insisted, stroking her arms. "Anywhere we could take them that's uninhabited would cause them to starve because they couldn't zap and couldn't feed. Anywhere where there's life, well, there is the potential for chaos and paradox and destruction if they keep forcing other beings to cross their own timelines and swallowing chunks of temporal material..."

"I know, I know, I get it," she said. "I'm just…"

"You're just being compassionate as always," the Doctor said, smiling. "But you're thinking about it as though they're human. They're not. They don't need to be free and have choices and go drink cappuccino. All they want is to frolic and feed. With a locked floor panel and an infinite amount of time energy bleeding into that room from the rift, they can do both. Until the end of time, if need be."

"Or until this place gets levelled," Jack chuckled.

"Which, let's face it," said Gwen. "Could be next week, could be a thousand years from now."

"True."

* * *

"Where's Gwen?" Ianto asked, walking unsurely into the Torchwood conference room.

"I sent her home," Jack said.

Ianto then zeroed in on the guests sitting across the table from his boss. "Hello," he smiled uneasily, setting the box-top filled with Chinese food on the table. "Doctor. Martha. I'm Ianto."

"I recognise you," the Doctor said, standing, shaking his hand. "Nice work with the Earth-towing-home thing."

"You too, sir."

"Oh, don't call him sir," Martha said. "He doesn't like it."

Jack laughed out loud. "Okay, someday you are _going _to tell me how you found that out!"

Martha looked at him with confusion, followed by disdain. The Doctor simply rolled his eyes.

"Well, it's a pity Gwen's gone home," Ianto commented, pulling white take-out boxes from the makeshift tray he'd brought. "I got her favourite."

"Which is?" asked Martha.

"Tofu in garlic sauce. Fancy a Chinese?"

"Sure."

* * *

"So Gwen," the Doctor said, chewing on some Kung Pao chicken, holding the white container in his left hand, chopsticks in his right. "What's she got to go home to?"

Next to him, Martha picked the snow peas out of the tofu container she was working on, and they crunched between her teeth. He looked at her and gestured without speaking, she nodded, and the two of them switched containers and each began picking at an entirely different entrée.

"A nice, normal husband," Jack answered, after he'd swallowed some shrimp fried rice. He smiled. "That was really cute what you two just did."

Martha and the Doctor stopped chewing in their tracks and looked at each other. "What did we just do?" he asked.

"And it was without even speaking," Jack said, crossing his arms. "Beautiful."

"What? Switching meals?" Martha asked. "That was _cute_?"

"Totally," said Jack.

Martha and the Doctor looked at each other again, shrugged, and went back to their Chinese food.

"Wow," commented the Time Lord. "Her working with you lot, that's an understanding bloke."

"Who?" asked Ianto.

"Gwen's nice normal husband."

"You'd better believe it," Jack chuckled. "Man's got some mettle."

"What does he do?" asked Martha. "Detective? Fireman? Military intelligence?"

"He drives a truck," said Jack.

"Really?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. "I'd have thought she'd want a man of action!"

"No, that's you," Jack said, winking. "In your relationship, you _are_ the grounding influence, Martha. In Gwen's, well… she's the one who _needs_ the grounding influence."

"So Gwen's the action one, and her lorry driver is the normal one?" Martha asked.

"Yep."

"That's nice."

"Besides," Jack continued. "Detectives are high-strung, firemen are unfaithful and the military renders all things unimaginative. Who needs that kind of baggage? All we really need is someone to hold, someone who knows what we want and need, what makes us happy, what makes us crazed with lust…"

"…when we wish to switch Chinese containers?" Ianto added.

"Exactly," said Jack.

Martha and the Doctor looked at each other again. This time, they smiled.

"I'll agree with that," Ianto said, and he held out his white container, and Jack bumped his against it, as though they were toasting.

"Yeah," the Doctor agreed, nodding as though he were realising it for the first time. "I mean, I'm not exactly human, but all of our basic visceral needs are simple."

"Not his," Ianto muttered, gesturing toward Jack. Martha nearly choked.

"To love and be loved," the Doctor continued. He looked at Martha once again. "To depend on someone. That's it."

* * *

Later, as the TARDIS refueled and Jack prepared an old bunker in the recesses of the Hub for the Doctor and Martha to stay overnight, the two lovers walked along the water, hand-in-hand.

After a long silence, the Doctor said, "It's okay, you know?"

"What is?"

"The angels," he said. "Putting them in that room. But it's okay, because they're like us – their needs are simple."

She smiled. "How did you know that's what I was thinking?"

"I didn't, necessarily," he told her. "But I know you. And I know you're still not okay with leaving them there."

"I'll cope," she said. "Especially if I know you're right. And I always know you're right."

"Are you sure?"

"Are you?"

"Martha, sentient beings can pretty much handle anything when they have their affective needs met," he said. "For humans, it's food, shelter, affection. Haven't you ever felt as though you could face down the army of Onkor-Fing itself as long as you had some basic necessities?"

She smiled up at him. "Yes, I have. And I don't know about that army, but… well, Daleks, posessing sun particles. Joan Redfern. I had you, so I was all right."

"Even back then? Even before…"

"Mm-hm," she said. "I loved you, and that's all I needed to know."

"Well then," he said with finality. "There you have it. You're an angel, and I'm your dark room."

She smiled into the night, and said, "I think I'd like to switch roles."

He stopped and looked at her with a surprised, but amused expression. "You're very cheeky, Martha Jones."

"Thank you, Doctor."

END


End file.
